Renowned Pianist Takes a Request and Adds to a Spirited Repertoire

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Gary Graffman, who gained renown as a concert pianist and teacher, at the bar in his Manhattan apartment where he serves up vodka he has infused with flavors like tangerine, pepper and dill.CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

A woman walks into a restaurant, sits down and orders a martini. Vodka, she says. Absolut. The gin-drinking man across the table smiles and says what he always says about vodka: “How can you stand that rotgut?”

Even the waitress has an opinion: “Absolutely not,” she announces, giggling at the play on words as she offers an explanation. The restaurant does not carry Absolut, she says. She suggests Tito’s Handmade Vodka, made from corn. She says she really likes it. The woman says that, under the circumstances, it is good enough for her.

Soon, from the shadowy bar at the other end of the place, comes the unmistakable metallic sound of martinis being shaken, first one, then the other. This is shaping up as a sublime moment that could be ruined by chatter. But the gin-drinking man’s mind is whirling with the kinds of silly things you say over a drink, and of course he says some of them.

He says he is picturing illicit backwoods stills tended by Prohibition-era bootleggers. But he is also thinking about — in woodsless Manhattan — someone quite different. That would be the concert pianist Gary Graffman and his back-of-the-apartment vodka.

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Mr. Graffman likes to serve samples of his homemade concoctions in cups more typically used for drinking sake. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

Mr. Graffman infuses commercial vodka with flavors according to, well, really, who needs a recipe? No, he has never trafficked in corn vodka — trafficking, in his case, would involve a journey of only a few feet, from an under-the-counter refrigerator in the apartment he shares with his wife, Naomi, a few steps from Carnegie Hall. But after a call to the Graffmans, the details had been worked out: He would make a batch of corn-infused vodka to be tried a few days later.

Mr. Graffman, 86, was the director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1986 to 2006 and the school’s president for the last 11 of those years. He taught superstars like Lang Lang and Yuja Wang. Apparently he taught them about more than playing the piano. He described one former student who stops by from time to time. “The door opens,” he said. “She doesn’t say, ‘I haven’t seen you for a while.’ She says, ‘Tangerine.’ ”

Tangerine vodka is one of Mr. Graffman’s specialties, but on this occasion, as a prelude to the corn-infused batch, he opted for the lime. “Three drops, to have an idea of what we’re talking about,” he said, bringing out a set of little cups — sake cups, actually, which he said were the perfect size for three-drop tastings of his different infusions.

He poured somewhat more than three drops. The gin-drinking man took a taste and left a little in the bottom of the cup.

“You have to finish it,” Mr. Graffman said in polite admonishment. “I’ll give you even less.”

He was pouring from 1.75-liter glass bottles — slightly less than a half-gallon, enough to serve at a dinner party or to friends at the bar in the apartment. He has never sold his concoctions. “But what a wonderful idea,” he said when he was asked if he had.

Mr. Graffman’s citrus-flavored vodkas, he said, bring back memories of his childhood: His parents were Russian émigrés — his father was a violinist whose first job in the United States was as concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota Orchestra). “My parents always put lemon peels in the vodka bottles,” he said. “I was allowed to drink it at celebrations even though I was only 12 years old.”

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Mr. Graffman took a seat at the piano after a recent vodka tasting at his apartment near Carnegie Hall. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

At age 12? “Even earlier,” he said. “When they had a party, there was wine. I stuck my tongue in it and tasted it. Not really drinking.”

On to his pepper vodka, with pepper from Hédiard, the gourmet grocer in Paris — “This is terrific with smoked salmon,” Mr. Graffman said — and his dill vodka, a recent addition to the lineup. “We were making borscht,” he said. “All the stuff you throw out tasted so good, I put it in vodka.”

And then the corn. Mr. Graffman’s wife had bought a couple of ears for him to use. When he cut the kernels, he reported, the yield was “a large amount of corn.”

What he poured into the cup did not have the tang of the tangerine or the punch of the pepper.

“I don’t want to be negative, but it’s a little boring, isn’t it?” he said. “But somebody might say it’s subtle and I don’t get it.”

The gin-drinking man said it was still rotgut, but very nice rotgut.

“Isn’t gin flavored vodka?” Mr. Graffman countered.

If he says so.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Renowned Pianist Takes a Request and Adds to a Spirited Repertoire. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe